They have no means of knowing whether the king is an evil tyrant or a kind, benevolent ruler.
<snip>
"So the PC's decided to go see the King, whose reputation as a ruler and even as a man was completely unknown to them for perhaps he would agree to aid them on their quest" doesn't quite do it for me.
Who said that they have no means? They may not know, but that's a different matter. Perhaps the players spent their time in play learning other things - after all, they can assess the character of the king when they meet him! (Do you know whether the Prime Minister of Australia is from the left or the right? Religious or atheist? You have the
means to know, but may have spent your time learning other things.)
I don't really see what you are trying to establish. Are you explaining that you would have framed the encounter differently from the way that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] did? That much is certainly clear - but that doesn't on its own seem grounds for criticism of Manbearact. Or are you trying to show that he framed it poorly? Or something else?
As I see it, the players want their PCs to meet a king to help defeat a red dragon. We don't know the backstory, but we know that one of the PCs is a servant of Bahamut, and hence an enemy of red dragons everywhere; and another is a wyrmslaying ranger. From their lack of familiarity with the king and his court, in conjunction with the (modest) nods to the Hobbit, I assume that the PCs are not locals, but have come to this land hunting the dragon and are turning to the king for help.
The events of play themselves make clear that the (intended) sacrifice of the child was not common knowledge, as the chamberlain wanted to keep it secret.
This doesn't strike me as terrible framing, or particularly off-the-wall backstory. The PCs in my game, around the time they reached paragon tier, journeyed to a town they had never visited in order to make common cause with its leadership against goblin incursions. They met first the (clerical) patriarch of the town, and then the baron; within a day or so worked out that there was a degree of power struggle between the two; and they ended up aligning with the baron after assessing his character at the dinner party that I have already referred to multiple times upthread. (They were initially more sympathetic to the patriarch, who had persuaded them that the baron was a bit of a ditherer; they became more sympathetic to the baron after learning that he was a victim of his advisor, and also from other personal interactions. That's a reasonably banal example of "resolving matters through play".)
Seriously, the King has NO reputation at all? If he has a reputation, at what point is it solid enough that the rolls can't change it? Maybe someone else actually directs the King, who is but a puppet/figurehead. Maybe the Drakes were truly Angels in disguise, testing the faith of the King. Perhaps the baby was a Shapechanged Lich. At what point is the backstory actually fixed?
We don't know what the king's reputation was, or whether or not he had one, because the only paricipant in the scene was Manbearcat and he has not told us. But you seem to think that a reputation for being a benevolent king rules out also being a baby-sacrificer; whereas I don't see that at all. The world is rife with rulers whose reputations belie their true colours.
His ongoing consorting with dragons exists only when the players roll it into existence, so they cannot plan for a king who consorts with dragons. The players have no actual knowledge to assess how their characters would plan to engage with the chancellor or the king. Instead, they create the king and country around them, so they can't actually have knowledge of the king and country that, logically, characters living there would have.
There are a few issues with this. First, the players didn't create the king and country - they created one event, namely, the presence of a child in the sacrifice. For all the players knew at that point, the king was a victim of duplicity by his chamberlain!
Second, you are correct that there are limits here on planning. That is a feature, not a bug: I have mentioned multiple times upthread that part of the point of this style of play is to move the weight of decision-making out of pre-play and non-action, "transition" scenes and into scene where action is taking place and action resolution mechanics being invoked ("action scenes"). You may have heard the phrase "20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours". Different players have different responses to that phrase, in part obviously because they find different things fun. The orientation in "indie" play
away from prep and planning and
towards action resolution is a deliberate response - it is the "indie" gamers way of increasing the number of minutes of fun per session.
Seems to me it had two purposes, and one was to ensure no retribution against the town and its people. And he succeeded, so by the Indie tenets, there should be no such retribution.
All I can do is quote Manbearcat (underling where he italicised):
The Rogue answered and began his Bluffed geas ritual threat in the arcane language spat out by the drake. He ended the formal threat by speaking in the common tongue so that the chamberlain could understand just what was taking place. The Bluff was both about threatening the drake to leave this place and never take any retribution on this kingdom nor any of its inhabitants for this specific defeat (and this is my assumption as it was a very broad threat...I could ask the player and confirm if anyone cares) lest he be magically ensorcelled with the curse...but its intent was relevant to the task at hand - convincing the chamberlain that he was capable of such a thing.
That strikes me as a fairly clear statement of intent.
If Manbearcat took there to be two intents then presumably that particular drake is not coming back, but that wasn't what I took away from the description of the scene and the later comments. That drake believes the bluff, no doubt, but I think the GM would not be thwarting the players' success by having the drake later realise that it is not really cursed - though you would want to introduce that turn of events in a way that was not anti-climactic.
Perhaps they have the same spell book and select different spells, as dictated by their personalities.
At which point they are no longer mechanically identical.
I mean "the best tactical approach, with no influence from the character's personality". If any deviation from perfect tactics is a death sentence for the PC's then they will always strive for perfect tactics, whether or not it is in character. The Dwarven Berserker who loathes Goblins will nevertheless bypass the Goblin Guards if his best tactics are to attack the Human priest leading them.
"Best tactics" are relative to a goal. There are no "best tactics" in the abstract. Hence my question about where the players' goals come from.
Your example of "deviation from perfect tactics being a death sentence" suggests that the players already have a goal - namely, fight these NPCs/monsters to the death. Where did that goal come from? Why aren't there other options. And if we want a game where the berserker will attack goblins in preference to priests, why don't we either (i) frame more scene with goblins and fewer with priests, or (ii) make sure that the player has more resources to bring to bear when fighting goblins than when fightin priests, or (iii) make sure that the player can earn more rewards (whatever form these take within the context of mechanics and broader table dynamics) for attacking goblins than attacking priests?
I'm not sure how you envisage a "death sentence" being applied. In storytelling play, I would expect the "death sentence" to be avoided by giving the GM responsibility for massaging ingame events (via fudging, or outright fiat, or a range of other well-known techniques). In indie play the avoidance of a "death sentence" is achieved via two main techniques: (a) fail forward, which is general in application; (b) mechanical reasons for the player to play out his/her PC's personality (see (i) to (iii) in the previous paragraph).
The PC's interact with the setting and set their goals in doing so. I may have a good ability to predict their goals (will you be surprised if your players who worship the Raven Queen take action to a threat against her?), but the players set their own goals.
Are you talking about PCs or players. In the fiction, I'm sure the PCs set their own goals. But at the table where do those goals come from? For instance in adventure path play, as I understand it, those goals come from the module writer as channelled by the GM.
The PC's have goals - doing something to advance those goals is not "doing something for nothing" Same for the Glabrezu.
Here we have a basic difference of perspective. Yes,
in the fiction, the PCs and the Glabrezu all have goals. But in the real world, at the table, the
players have goals and the PCs are intimately related to those goals; whereas the Glabrezu is not an any similar relationship to the goals of any participant in the game. This is what makes the PCs protagonists, in my game, but the Glabrezu not. Of course, this is in turn related to the idea of "Schroedinger's NPCs" and "Schroedinger's backstory", and the idea that the function of these GM-introduced story elements is, fundamentally, to provide conflict and challenge for the protagonists. A bit like the antagonists in a work of fiction, however real they may be
in the fiction, at the meta-level of analysis and construction they are devices. They are not ends in themselves.
Dausuul said:
I would probably roll dice to see if the glabrezu had granted a wish recently
Seems a reasonable approach.
I would almost never do it that way, for two (related) reasons.
First, rolling dice like this implies that I'm satisfied that it won't hurt the game for the wish to be granted. Therefore, I would make that decision based on whether or not I though it would drive the story forward to go one way or another. From the point of view of maintaining conflict and momentum, there doesn't seem a reason to do it randomly.
Second, it seems like summoning this demon to get this wish is important to the player. S/he has invested mechanical resouces and play time into it. I therefore wouldn't resolve the outcome via an offscreen roll like that. If I was going to introduce that as a reason for the PC not getting the wish, I would probably narrate it as a consequence for failure in the bargaining.
I wouldn't expect others to be moved by the reasons I have given here - they are reasons that are particular to a certain playstyle. (Roughly, what I have labelled "indie".) I think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] might agree with the reasons, though, or at least the general outlook on play that they reflect.
) and (B) they lose the authenticity of their scene-framing and re-framing authority (re-framed through the deployment of resources and its effect on the evolution of the fictional positioning) (also 
